SHORT BUT SWEET: PHOBIA — “GRIND CORE”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Sep 052014
 

(In this post Leperkahn reviews the new EP by Orange County’s Phobia.)

Phobia may have just won the prize for the most hilariously literal release title in existence.

They are releasing a new 7” via Deep Six Records. It’s called Grind Core. If you’ve heard of Phobia before, that’s truly all you need to know to understand this thing slays.

In the hands of most bands, naming your release after the well-established sub genre in which you traffic might be seen as a bit ill-advised. We all might release a collective groan if Morbid Angel named their next album Death Metal, especially after the out-of-touch fiasco that was Ilud Divinum Insanus. A hypothetical new Mayhem album entitled Black Metal would probably warrant a plagiarism lawsuit. But in the hands of Phobia, such a title really does tell you all you need to know before even setting down the needle. It assures you that Phobia haven’t pulled a highly-unlikely genre-180 to explore complextro — and that the band are still churning out grind as potent as ever and aren’t bashful about saying so. Continue reading »

SCULPTED IN TAR: MOLOCH, HAGGATHA, SLUG SALT LAVA

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Sep 052014
 

In this globe-trotting post I’m reviewing a recent split release by Moloch from Nottingham, England, and Haggatha from Vancouver, Canada, as well as a January 2014 EP by Slug Salt Lava from Istanbul, Turkey. When you hear the songs, you’ll probably understand why I grouped them together under the heading “Sculpted In Tar”.

MOLOCH

The Moloch / Haggatha 7″split was released earlier this year by an unholy triumvirate of Dry Cough Records (UK), Graanrepubliek Records (Netherlands), and Choking Hazard Records (Canada). If you order from Dry Cough’s Bandcamp page (here), you’ll also get an immediate digital download of the split.

Moloch’s track is named “Head of Coil”, and it follows the band’s 2013 splits with Meth Drinker and Ensorcelor. The word “crushing” gets thrown around with abandon, like spit in a mosh pit, but “Head of Coil” is crushing. The fuzz-bombed riffs and powerhouse drum beats hit like a slow-motion bridge collapse, and the people trapped in those cars as they descend into the yawning chasm below — they’re screaming; you hear them in the furious vocals and the squalling feedback. To repeat: crushing. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MARTRÖÐ, “…AND JUSTICE FOR ART”, NUCLEAR PERVERSIONS, BEYOND GRACE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Sep 052014
 

 

Here are a few randomly chosen items discovered over the last 24 hours that I thought were worth your time.

MARTRÖÐ

This first item caught my attention because of the artwork up there. It was drawn by Misanthropic-Art for a forthcoming EP by a band named Martröð. But having seen the artwork, my eyes popped open even wider when I saw the line-up:

MkM – Vocals (Aosoth, Antaeus)
Esoterica – Guitars (Krieg, Chaos Moon)
H.V Lyngdal – Guitars (Wormlust)
Wrest – Additional Guitars, Ambiance (Leviathan)
Thorns – Drums (Acherontas, Blut Aus Nord) Continue reading »

HIDEOUS DIVINITY: “SINISTER AND DEMENTED”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Sep 052014
 

The Font of All Human Knowledge tells us that the phrase “slash and burn” originated as the name for an ancient agricultural technique that involves cutting trees and other natural growth and then burning them to ash, once dried, in order to create fields for new growth. That phrase springs to mind immediately upon hearing “Sinister and Demented”, the new song by Italy’s Hideous Divinity that premiered not long ago. It appears on their forthcoming album Cobra Verde.

The song is an assault of high-speed sonic decimation. It threshes, it thrashes, and then it burns in a super-heated conflagration. But so complete is the devastation that it’s hard to imagine that anything will grow from the scorched ground it leaves behind.

Everything in the song is geared toward jolting the listener with galvanizing power — from the blazing fretwork to the jaw-dropping drumwork to the ravaging vocals (which sound more like a pack of wolves than a single human). Simply from the perspective of technical proficiency, this is technical death metal of a very high order. Continue reading »

FALLS OF RAUROS: “BELIEVE IN NO COMING SHORE”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Sep 042014
 

(In this post, we share guest contributor Ben Smasher’s review of the forthcoming new album by Falls of Rauros. We will post a second review on Monday.)

Album reviews have pretty much become moot these days. It takes less time to go to youtube and listen to any album than it does to read a total stranger’s thoughts on it. So I try to write reviews only when I feel intensely moved to do so, so that I can create something that offers my personal insight into the music and how I relate to it, in the hopes that you can maybe understand it better after reflecting on my perspective. This album is enthralling, among so many other things:

Believe In No Coming Shore seems almost incidental to me. Falls of Rauros have come such a long way as a band since their beginnings, that when realizing the vast and elaborate scope of their progression and direction, this album seems like a mere checkpoint upon their journey to becoming one of the most fascinating and memorable bands that have graced my ears. They already are that in my eyes, but the path that they are paving with each release is one that utterly disregards boundaries, exudes personality, and gently breathes magnificently vivid tapestries that are absolutely unique to Maine’s Falls of Rauros. Continue reading »

AT THE GATES IS TEASING US (WITH A SNIPPET OF NEW MUSIC)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Sep 042014
 

 

I thought our man BadWolf got some interesting insights about the new At the Gates album in his recent interview with Tompa Lindberg, but just now we got a bit of aural insight into At War With Reality: Century Media has posted a teaser on YouTube that contains a (painfully brief) slice of the music.

Of course, it’s not enough of a slice on which to begin opining about the album as a whole — but as slices go, it sounds tasty to me. Listen next: Continue reading »

CANNIBAL CORPSE: “A SKELETAL DOMAIN”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Sep 042014
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new 13th album by Cannibal Corpse.)

Cannibal Corpse at this point really are in their musical stride. Even beyond the massive leap in musical proficiency the band made when Corpsegrinder replaced Barnes on vocals, the way they’ve been firing on all cylinders since The Wretched Spawn is really unmatched in the careers of many other long-standing extreme metal bands. In other cases, the quality might still be great, but it hasn’t consistently improved as it has in the discography of Cannibal Corpse. A Skeletal Domain follows Torture, which is a pretty difficult album to surmount, considering it was easily the most savage album they’d ever recorded. A Skeletal Domain is indeed better than its predecessor, though whether you agree may depend on whether you like the approach they’ve taken on this new one.

A Skeletal Domain is a very tactical technical death metal record. Everything about it feels calculated, refined, ground into a fine powder that shimmers like diamonds and will cut flesh at the touch. It’s a very riffy album in the spirit of the Jack Owen/Chris Barnes era, but with Pat O’Brien’s sense of guitar acrobatics. The mix is much cleaner, which really accents this more refined approach as well. I previously would’ve called Evisceration Plague their song-writing record. THIS is their song-writing record in definitive terms. Everything stays true to the Corpsegrinder-era Corpse spirit, but it is at the same time everything Torture was not. I praised Torture for its rather primal assault on the senses, and while A Skeletal Domain is definitely the equivalent of being beaten to death and mauled by a mandrill, it’s much more technical, the song structures much more progressive and more unconventional. Continue reading »

NE OBLIVISCARIS STREAM THEIR FIRST SONG FROM “CITADEL”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Sep 042014
 

We have been eagerly awaiting the first sounds from Citadel, the forthcoming album by Australia’s Ne Obliviscaris, and today we (and you) get the chance to hear them. Not long ago, Terrorizer premiered the album’s first advance track, with the lengthy title of “Painters of the Tempest part II, movement III: ‘Curator’ Elusive Reverence”.

Citadel will be released on Season of Mist on November 7 this year. You can pre-order the album here.

This is an exclusive stream, so you’ll need to visit this location to hear it (but do come back and let us know what you think of the music): Continue reading »

BANDCAMP DESTRUCTION: DAKHMA, ORGAN DEALER, RUINANT

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 042014
 

 

(In this post DGR reviews three pissed-off short releases.)

It’s pretty well known that a huge chunk of the heavy metal spectrum serves as catharsis, a way for us to scream out our daily rage or miseries — the expulsion of energy otherwise pent up that some folks might let lash out or otherwise ruin their day.

In my case, I’ve always had a few go-to songs after a particularly rough work day (because really, I’m not getting pissed off at home), but lately it seems like that list has gotten bigger and bigger, especially as I keep digging deeper into different underground scenes in an effort to find stuff to share with you fine folk.

Right now, that sweet spot for the white-hot, rage-induced thrashabout that usually happens as the result of some sort of bullshit has been where the grind scene tends to slam headfirst into the hardcore punk scene, where musicians seem less interested in what they are actually playing and more in creating a swirling vortex of sonic destruction.

In the case of this post, two of the three releases serve that particular purpose. And the third? Well, the third is just a meaty slab of death metal that I felt like sharing because it would allow us to do a little bit o’ world traveling. Continue reading »

JUTE GYTE: “RESSENTIMENT”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 032014
 

 

(Austin Weber reviews the brand new album by the one-man wrecking machine from Missouri known as Jute Gyte.)

As it stands, this is the third time I have written about Jute Gyte here, the consistently crushing solo project of Missouri native, Adam Kalmbach. After writing up his previous album from this year, Vast Chains, my sense of curiosity led me to email the man behind the band and inquire as to his lack of social media presence. I was greeted with the answer that he, in so many words, has a disagreeable personality and does not play well with others, thus the lack of an official band Facebook page or other account.

I found this very interesting, as it speaks volumes about himself as an artist. If we are being honest, what musician doesn’t want to hear his work praised? Either as a form of validation or as an appeal to narcissism, or both?

It would seem to me that Adam Kalmbach’s desire to stay hidden in the shadows may show how much darker and cathartic of a release creating music must be for him. Further evidence for this suspicion may be found in his lack of press releases. The man drops several releases a year, but because there is no band page or other online presence, the music simply appears without a whisper. Continue reading »

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